


Prodigal Sons

by apollos



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Family Drama, Gen, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Born to a sickly oracle of a mother and sober king of a father, how could they be anything but?(The events in the years leading up to the death of Genji Shimada.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for this installment: graphic descriptions of pregnancy and discussion of a miscarriage.

 

 

> "Remember: the unmoored boat floats about." - Murasaki Shikibu, _The Tale of Genj_

 

Shimada Risa did not have an easy time with any of her pregnancies. Robbed of one of her ovaries by a cancer that would later kill her, it was hard to conceive even with the most expensive fertility drugs. The first ended in miscarriage at the three-month mark. She and Hideo had mourned quietly at home, shying coyly away from their cohorts. Risa plotted a lily plant in memoriam, knowing the baby would have been a girl and that she would have named it Yuri, and tended to this plant as a new life took form inside her immediately following the first. That life, that small seed cradled in her belly, was Hanzo.

Hanzo raged war on her body from the beginning. The first trimester, nausea reduced her to a wraith in bed, fed broth and medicine intermittently. Hideo flitted in and out, never staying long, his hand cool on her overheated bone-white arms. The servants were pleasant enough but she could not bear to see their fleshy faces; after she had taken her broth and medicine as a good woman should, she cast them all away. She cried. She implored the child to stop hurting her so. She missed her own mother and her own father; she wished she had siblings to fall back on. She promised the child that she would provide them with a sibling. (At this point, she knew it was a boy; at this point, she knew what name she wished to give him; at this point, she had learned not to take chances.)

The second trimester went more smoothly, but not by much. Nausea gone and strength regained, she dragged herself on her delicate ankles and smooth sticks of calves to their porch. It was winter; she was now freezing, but Hideo could offer her no warmth but the old fur-lined coat he had bought in Milan when they were still dating and she had stolen from the closet. She watched the barren branches of cherry blossom trees rub together against a gray sky. If she had cried, her tears surely would have frozen to her face. But the child inside would not let her cry, not anymore.

In the third trimester, she received visitors and their wishes and gifts. She took suggestions on names and breastfeeding and child rearing with smiles. In private, she screamed at Hideo. How dare you let them see me like this, she accused him. Don't you see me? What this has done to me? My hair is a mess, my complexion is terrible, I am skin and bones but so swollen in the middle. And Hideo would say, as flat as the landscapes in the paintings that hung on their walls: _What are you talking about? Are you crazy? You're so beautiful, Risa. Everybody can see._

Delivery almost killed her. But not quite. Not yet.

She woke up four hours after Hanzo's birth, panicked by the feeling of emptiness and the lack of infant in her arms. She turned over and saw him in Hideo's arms, the arms that were inked up and down with tattoos of koi and lotus flowers and a million other things. Hideo was humming, not quite singing. Hanzo, as of then unnamed, slept. And Risa wept.

Despite being such a difficult pregnancy, Hanzo was an easy, happy child. A mirror image of his father in looks, he took after Risa's own father, though long deceased, in personality. Diligent and ready to learn from the first time his mouth met her breast, he was an early walker, an early talker. Risa could not be separated from him; Hideo would tell her, late at night while Hanzo slept beside her, that certain things were _expected_ of her. That they had _servants_ for the more banal childrearing tasks. And Risa would whisper back, a hand curled around Hanzo's small seashell ears: _do you even love your own son? Do you even understand?_ The lily plant would stand silently on the windowsill in their bedroom, soaking in their conversation as effortlessly as it were the water that fell from Risa's watering can.

Trouble conceiving, again. Risa blamed herself; every time her husband kissed her, lowered himself into her, she could not scrounge up that same passion. They barely saw each other in the day, Hideo off doing what the Shimada men must do, Risa at home caring for Hanzo and making friends of the servant women. The man inside of her felt like a stranger. A threat. It was illogical; she loved him still, and always would, and when she thought of all that he had done for her she wanted to kiss him fiercely. But when they tried to conceive these thoughts disappeared. Half the time she had to cut it short, convinced that she could hear Hanzo crying in the other room.

But Hanzo, playing with his toy blocks and taking manner lessons from the servants and watching with patient eyes as the clan elders waved their fingers in his face, knew nothing of his parents besides that they loved him and he loved them.

Risa knew the night that Genji was conceived, knew it the second that sperm met egg inside her. She cried out, seized by a sudden feeling she could not identified—she wrapped her arms around Hideo's neck and pressed her wet face to his cheek. And Hideo, bless his heart, withdrew, looked at her quizzingly. _Are you alright?_ Better than ever. _What do you mean?_ This is it. I know it. But oh, Hideo—I'm afraid.

Nausea did not come in the first trimester; insomnia and a general malaise took its place. She saw Hanzo only at dusk and dawn, before her bedtime and right after she woke. He would ask her what was wrong; she did her best to explain that he would be an older brother _. That's a lot of responsibility, Hanzo._ I know, Mama. I can handle it, he said as well as a two-year-old could say it.

At night, she turned on the porch light and sat in a chair. It was spring; moonlight bounced off the cherry blossoms. She had Hideo's old coat wrapped around her shoulders. In her lap was whatever book she could manage to get her hands on. Biographies; textbooks; trashy novels; and her favorite, the classics. She would read them out loud to Genji, who would flip inside her at the particularly beautiful scenes. A poet, she thought. He's going to be a poet.

Risa could tell the future as well as she could turn from it. This is something Hideo would say of her, as wistfully as he could, after her death.  
  
Second trimester, third trimester, passed the same as before. The same old grudges were dredged from the depths of their marriage. The lily plant watched it all, and relayed the information back to Hanzo when he would sneak inside his parents' room while they were sleeping, his father bare-chested with a hand laying on his mother's stomach. Hanzo was amazed, and told her so—there's a _baby_ in there? A little boy, like me? _We don't know yet, Hanzo._ But Risa did know, and she told the lily plant, who told Hanzo in turn, the petals smooth beneath his fingers, the moonlight falling in ribbons over them all.

The delivery of Genji went much more smoothly than last time, and Risa was awake when they placed him on her chest. He was an unusually small baby, defying the expectations caused by his huge home in Risa's body. He was very pink, with a curl of black hair on top of his precious head. Risa realized that this was her first time seeing a technical newborn; she had not even seen her beloved Hanzo in this state. As usual, the tears denied to her by the child came, and they did not stop flowing for months.

While Hanzo's name had come from Risa and Risa alone, Hideo surprised her when he told her what he wanted to name Genji. For it was the same name that Risa wanted, all without communication. But how did you know? She asked him. _The Tale of Genji is one of my favorite books. It's a classic, Risa._ I know. I read it in school, and again three months ago. _Really?_ Yes.

"Genji's a silly name," Hanzo declared, peering at his little brother in his swaddle in Risa's arms when they took him home. "I would have named him Ryu."

Hanzo had, at this point, started his training with the sword. An appreciation for the dragon would take root in him that Genji would never quite develop. Risa knew this; an earthquake, like the one that had occurred during Genji's conception, shook beneath her feet. But it was on a much smaller scale this time; it was easier to blame it on post-partum vertigo. She steadied her hold on Genji and she smiled and she promised to herself to stop this silliness.

After Genji, Risa became sickly in a way she would never recover from. An autoimmune disease, the doctors said. Genetic. Unrelated to the cancer. Tested the kids—they didn't have it. (It's probably what killed Yuri in the womb, Risa thought, though the doctors told her that was unlikely. It's a curse that befalls women and women alone, Risa thought.) Weakness in spirit, whispered the elders. She had never liked them anyway; only Hideo. Don't try to conceive again, said the doctors. It will kill you.

Hideo had the surgery. He did not tell Risa until afterwards, and in that moment, Risa knew that she loved him with all her heart. She drew him close to her. Risa was a small woman, a bird taken form, and Hideo was much larger, but he crumpled in her arms as easily as her sons did.

To watch the boys play together—that was all Risa wanted in her final years. On her good days, that's what she got. On her bad days, they would come into the sickroom, the sickroom with the floor-to-ceiling painted screens dating from so long ago and the ever-patient lily plant, and crawl into bed with her. Hanzo and Genji on either side, their faces mirrors of their father's, though Genji favored her slightly more. Childhood pudginess, smooth hair, both wearing his long, Hanzo's long enough that the servants braided it for him in the mornings when Risa could not do it herself. She would run her fingers along both their heads and draw them to her, smell their milky childhood smell.

"Read us a story," Hanzo would ask.

"Yes, Mama! A story." Genji was always a little too loud. Hanzo looked at him, shushed him. Risa laughed.

"You're too serious, Hanzo," she would say, kissing his forehead. Then, at the pout of Genji's lips, she would kiss his, too. "And you _are_ too loud, Genji."

"The _story,_ Mama."

"Yes, yes. The story."

And Hanzo, who always preferred the side closest to the door, would get up and select the book from the bookshelf Risa had requested be installed in their bedroom. Both her boys liked the war stories, the gruesome bloodiness that made her a little queasy, that hit her in a place too close to home. But on the days where her voice was barely a rasp and her eyes were moon-punched, Hanzo would bring her the happy things. The poetry; the haikus about the fleeting beauty of spring. The romances; she would skip any potentially racy scenes, invent her own idea of what happened—oh, boys, they told each other about their favorite seasons, and then they went for a moonlight stroll. The beautiful, hand-illustrated copy of _The Tale of Genji_ that Hideo had given her for their twelfth marriage anniversary; by the time of her death when Genji was seven, she could let the book fall open at will and start reading from anywhere, for that was the universal favorite.

It's a different type of sick, she told Hideo. She told her boys.

What do you mean? They both asked.

I've been sick all my life, many ways. And this way—it's the worst. That is what she told the boys.

Stage four. She told Hideo. Untreatable. Everywhere. Two months to live.

And Risa could always tell the future.

The lily plant on the windowsill became quite the object of attention. Genji and Hanzo fought each other for it—fought each other to the point of biting and blood and screaming and tears and clumps of hair in each other's hands. Fought each other to the point they were separated and scolded by the servants and the elders alike, but never their father. When they fought so hard that Hanzo sprained his wrist, when Hanzo was eleven and Genji was eight and it was the anniversary of Risa's death, Hideo took the lily plant that Risa had loved so much and carried it in the coat that Risa had loved so much with the hand-illustrated copy of _The Tale of Genji_ in the other pocket and he went to the very top of a hill on the Shimada property, a hill the sun set behind, and he dug a hole for the lily plant and another for the coat and the book and he buried them both. He knew full well the plant would not survive without the artifice of their bedroom. He knew full well the worth of the coat and the book alike. He knew full well Risa's face was hidden in that setting sun, blaring in his own, and he knew full well that she was not criticizing him.

And Risa could always turn away from the future.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a while, and I wanted to hurry up and get it out before canon can invalidate it. No ETA on the next (first?) chapter; I've learned not to hold myself to deadlines.


End file.
